Inoculation

We've all heard the phrase "a little knowledge can be dangerous". The same could be true for Christianity. Knowing a little bit about Jesus can be dangerous and that it prevents us from digging deeper and developing A closer relationship with him. It's sort of like being inoculated. When we went to inoculate somebody from a deadly disease we give them a dead form of that same virus that causes the body to react to learn about it just a little bit so that when the real thing comes along the body can attack it and prevent it from spreading throughout the rest of the body. The same happens with Jesus. Some people feel that they know all about him. Maybe they took a class in college or high school in which they spent maybe a chapter on Christianity. Or maybe they even went to church for a brief time when they were young they may have even been confirmed and feel that they know enough and that's all they need and they can go on. So that when the Holy Spirit comes in their lives and tries to develop a deeper relationship between them and Jesus their immune to it they feel that they know enough I don't need to dig any deeper they don't need to spend any time in his word they know what Christianity is all about. That little knowledge they have is really preventing them from going any further. They essentially have a "dead form of faith" which passes off as "being religious" and fools them into a false sense of security.  

The History books don't matter

    A phrase President Obama liked to use a lot in his speeches was "They will be on the wrong side of history".   It was meant as a way of saying, "We can't do anything about their actions now, but history will not be kind to them and will right the wrong later".   When Russia invaded the Ukraine, Obama said this of them as a way trying to scold Vladimir Putin into rethinking his decision. 

   One has to wonder about this issue of being on the "right side of history".  If I am an atheist and don't believe in a life after death, why should I care what the history books right about me?  I don't exist anymore and I won't be able to care what they write about me anyway.    Does Hitler care?  Stalin?   Mao?  Do you think Putin will care when he is gone?

    But if there is a heaven and hell, it's NOT the history books that I will be mostly concerned with when I am gone.  It will be a different set of books God has that will be of much larger concern to me.   In the previous case, the history books are essentially moot and powerless.  In the later case, God's books have a lot to say about us.

 In Revelation 20:12, the Apostle John writes in,

12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books....
15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

    God keeps 2 sets of books, much like businesses keep ledgers with credits and debits being tracked.  On God's books it's much the same.  One one side is the list of all our sins we have committed, and on the other is the sins paid for by God's own Son JESUS CHRIST!  For those, who are baptized in Christ Jesus they are made alive in him and pass from death to life.  Not in some future time, but RIGHT NOW!   We have nothing to fear as we die.  Our names are written not only in the Book of Life,  but in God's own hands.  800 years before Christ, the Prophet Isaiah wrote,

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will not forget you!  See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands!

   Our names are not written in "pencil" in the Book of Life, but are written in the blood Christ shed on the cross for us!